Maggie and the Mourning Beads Page 5

  "My apartment is down near the beach, you know," Brooke explained. "So I went by there every day on the way here. There were roses on the corner, and they were blooming like crazy, all pink and red and orange. Really wonderful."

  "Yeah."

  "So I would see her out there pruning and watering and all that. I complimented the roses one day. Told her she must love them to devote so much time to them. And that I was jealous of her green thumb, because I couldn't keep a houseplant alive."

  "Uh huh," Maggie said. "I remember you killing that air plant in your old apartment. Poor thing."

  "Yeah." Brooke smiled. "I'm hopeless. So anyway, I just gave her that simple compliment, and she acted like I'd insulted her. Her husband was there and he thanked me for the kind words and said they were really beautiful and his wife was really invested in them, and she just got all mad at us and stormed into the house."

  She finished the turnovers and picked up the baking pan. "Keith Norris was all apologetic. It's like he couldn't say anything right, either. He said he was sorry but she just had her own way and it wasn't my fault."

  "I know she could be hard to get along with," Maggie agreed.

  "But that's not the point. The next morning I was going by and she was out in the yard. She had a big bottle of bleach and she was going around, systematically pouring it on all the roses."

  "Oh, no," Maggie said. "How horrible."

  "Yeah. She killed them. All of them. I asked if I could at least pick the blooms before she did it and she screamed at me and told me to get off her property or she'd have me arrested. She was crying and yelling at me and there was nothing I could do. It was totally crazy."

  "How weird," Maggie said. "It makes you wonder."

  "Yeah," Brooke said. "If she treated some innocent roses like that, imagine what her daughter went through. I think you'd better hope the kid gets a good lawyer and pleads self-defense or something."

  Then Brooke put the peach turnovers in the oven to bake, and Maggie sat and thought for a while.

  Chapter Seven

  Reese's silver Spyder pulled up to park at the curb and he got out, wearing a celery green button-up shirt that would make most people appear washed out. But on him, of course, it just made you wonder why all men didn't wear celery green.

  He came into the coffee house. He went over to where Nora was typing away on her laptop and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. Then he said hello to Maggie.

  There was a pair of tourists at a nearby table, and the husband grimaced as his wife dug her fingernails into his arm. The locals, on the other hand, did their best to ignore Reese, in keeping with Carita's unwritten code of cool toward celebrities.

  Reese seemed to be oblivious to all the energy swirling around him, but Maggie knew he wasn't unaware, just used to it.

  "Your hair's a mess," Nora said, and he obediently bent his head so she could smooth it like a mother patting down her son's cowlick.

  "All better?" he asked with a wry grin.

  "Acceptable," Nora replied with a wink.

  "Do you ever look bad?" Maggie asked, pulling her wrinkled T-shirt straight.

  "When I was wasted I looked pretty bad," he replied with a shrug.

  "Nope," Nora said. "Even at your worst you just looked pale and gaunt and beautiful, like a ghostly angel."

  He shrugged again. "I guess. Who cares?"

  "Only your fans. Speaking of whom, you need to call back the publicist about some appearances."

  "No," he said flatly. He turned to Brooke, behind the counter. "Can I get an espresso, love?"

  "As long as you call me love, you can get anything," she joked back. "Coming right up."

  The tourists came up to him then, and he handled it with his usual patience. After they'd left he sat down with Nora, who kept working on her laptop.

  "It's times like these I wish I still smoked," he said, drumming his fingers on the table.

  "Smoked?" Maggie asked.

  "Cigarettes."

  "Ugh."

  "I know," he said. "But I was a chain smoker back when I was an addict. And man, that was the one thing that could relax me when I was really freaking out."

  "What's freaking you out?"

  He didn't answer that.

  "Why would you want to get addicted again?" she asked.

  "I don't. But I miss the ability to make the stress go away like that." He snapped his fingers.

  "If you smoked you'd ruin your looks and there goes your career," Nora said.

  "Who cares? I've got more money than I could ever spend. I'm looking for ways to get rid of some of it now."

  "I could use a couple million," Maggie joked.

  "Okay."

  "Don't you dare," she said firmly. "I'm not going to be your charity case."

  He shrugged. "I know, Maggie. You've got to stand on your own two feet."

  Brooke set his espresso on the counter next to where Maggie was perched on her stool.

  He started to stand up to get it, but Nora said, without looking up from the laptop screen, "I'm getting a lot of frantic calls about you, Kid."

  Nora called him kid, the same way she called Maggie junior. She was only a decade older than Reese, but she was still rather motherly toward her now almost forty-year-old client. It wasn't really surprising, since she had first met him when he was only a teen. In fact, she was the one who had named him Reese Stevens, when the shy Stanley Tibbets had been a keyboard player in a high school rock band. She'd dragged him out in front of the crowd and made him the lead singer, and the rest had been history.

  So now she often still acted like a doting mother toward him, and he often seemed a bit like a teenage rebel around her.

  "I don't care," he was saying to her, in a voice that was only saved from sounding whiny by its rich timbre.

  "Stop being immature," Nora said.

  "I'm not immature," he said.

  "Okay," Nora replied. "Then let's talk about the late show."

  "What show?" Maggie asked.

  "He's supposed to do the Later Than Late show. You know the one."

  "I love that show," Maggie said. She turned to Reese. "When will you be on?"

  Reese frowned. "Never."

  "Of course you'll do the show," Nora said. "You can't hide out in this little town being invisible if you want to keep your career going."

  "Invisible?" he said with a snort. "I can't even go jogging on the beach without some paparazzo getting a shot of me and selling it to a tabloid. I'm not nearly invisible enough."

  "That's hardly the same thing. You need to do promotion. Talk about your projects. It's in your contract."

  "There are limits," he said stubbornly. Maggie would have sworn his lip was sticking out like a little kid's.

  "Stop pouting at me," Nora said, speaking to him as only someone who'd known him since he was in high school could. "You're a grown man."

  "Did anyone ever tell you you're cute when you're mad?" Maggie teased, and he shot her a glare.

  She smiled placidly back at him, and he wrinkled up his nose. "All right. I'm immature. I confess. Did you know that people stop maturing emotionally when they become famous? I'm not a grown man. I'm still a teenaged boy."

  Maggie looked him over from his stubble to his broad shoulders. "No, Reese. If there's one thing you're not, it's a boy."

  He laughed.

  "Good job of trying to change the subject," Nora said. "But back to the point: the publicist left three messages for you. I need you to get with the program here. You have a contractual obligation to promote your last film."

  "I know how it works, Nora. This isn't my first rodeo."

  "Then what's the problem? They're booking you on a few shows. You just need to be charming and tell a few anecdotes and talk up the film."

  "I'll do the others. I just don't want to do that show."

  "Why not?" Maggie asked. "The host is a doll."

  He ignored that. "You know how she is," he said to Nora. "She'll want me to sing
."

  "It wouldn't hurt you to sing a bit," she replied.

  "Don't even go there, Nora."

  Maggie looked out the window while they continued to argue. Had she heard Reese sing? In person, not on a recording? She tried to remember. She knew he hadn't been a professional singer since he switched careers to become an actor after he got sober, but she suddenly realized she had never heard him sing, even in private. She wondered if he even sang in the shower when he was alone. He had a gorgeous raspy baritone voice that made your toes curl up when the sound washed over you, and he hadn't used it in how long? How strange that she hadn't noticed until now.

  He and Nora were still going back and forth.

  "Please don't be difficult," she said.

  "Moi? Difficult?"

  She looked at him blankly.

  "Fine. I'll do the show. But not this week. I've got… stuff… planned."

  "No problem. They'll want to book you a couple weeks out so they can hype it."

  "Terrific," Reese mumbled.

  "It's not that bad."

  "You know the drill," he said firmly. "The contract says no singing. No personal questions."

  "It's not my first rodeo either, Stanley. I've got it."

  "Make sure you have got it, Nora. Or I'll find myself another manager."

  She laughed. "Yeah, sure." Nora went back to her laptop and Reese came over to sit next to Maggie at the counter. He picked up his abandoned espresso and downed it in one gulp.

  "What is your problem?" Maggie asked. "You're acting like a—"

  "—a what?" he asked.

  "—a spoiled movie star."

  "That's what I am."

  "Since when?"

  He sighed. "I know. I'm being a brat. I'm just… a bit stressed right now."

  "About what?"

  He shrugged.

  "Why don't you want to appear on that show? The host is fun. And she's gorgeous. I'd think you'd like that."

  "She's not my type," he said.

  "You have a type?"

  "Only you, darling," he drawled. "Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."

  "The Thin Man, right?" Maggie asked, and he nodded. "I set that one up for you, didn't I?"

  "Yup," he said. He flashed her a grin, looking more like his usually cheerful self. "You are, you know."

  "I am what?"

  His phone rang.

  "My type," he said.

  "Sure," she said sarcastically.

  He looked down at his phone. A look came over his face that was so cold she felt herself shiver.

  "You okay?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

  He ignored her and turned away to answer the call.

  He sat with his back to her for a bit, muttering an occasional curt phrase into the phone. But mostly he seemed to be listening to whoever had caused the sudden mood change.

  Maggie perched on her stool and tried not to eavesdrop, though she was dying of curiosity.

  She turned around and faced out into the coffee shop.

  She saw Nora's husband Quinn come in the door. Quinn was a quiet man a dozen years younger than his wife. Maggie had always wondered about their relationship. Quinn was attractive, in an unassuming sort of way. But though she'd known him for several years, he never talked about himself, almost to the point of being secretive. Nora never said much about him to Maggie either, except to occasionally refer to him jokingly as her "boy toy."

  Maggie worried that the term was more than a joke, and hoped that the tough-talking Nora wasn't going to get her heart broken. But who was she to judge? She'd been the younger wife of a rich man herself, and it had been a total disaster. Now there wasn't a romantic interest visible anywhere in her own future, and that was probably for the best.

  Quinn spotted Nora, and headed to where she was sitting. He leaned down and kissed her. She packed up her laptop, then he pulled out her chair for her and she stood up. They held hands as they headed out.

  When Nora glanced back toward the counter before leaving, Maggie gave her a quick smile and wave goodbye, but Reese, still with that shuttered expression, didn't even look up from his phone call.

  He finally hung up the phone just around the time Nora and Quinn disappeared out of sight down the block.

  Maggie turned back to face the counter again.

  Reese put his phone away. "Oh, hi," he said, as if just remembering she was there.

  "Do you think Quinn really loves her?" she asked Reese.

  "Quinn and Nora? Sure," he said absently. "Why not?"

  "I guess I'm too cynical to believe in true love."

  "Join the club," he said. He glared at the dregs in his coffee cup as if he wanted to strangle them.

  "What's the matter? Who was that on the phone?"

  "The witch," he said briefly.

  "Don't use that as an insult," Brooke said, coming up to them with a tall mug in hand. "We witches take offense."

  Reese smiled wanly. "Sorry."

  Brooke dropped a generous spoonful of whipped cream on an iced mocha and slid it across to Maggie.

  "Who said I needed a mocha with whipped cream?" Maggie asked.

  "The thermometer," Brooke said. "It's going to get over eighty at the beach later today. You need to be prepared."

  Maggie smiled at her. "Luckily I'm too weak to argue with you."

  "That's right. You need the caffeine and sugar to build up your strength."

  Maggie put her hands around the mug, feeling the iciness through the ceramic cup.

  Reese got up from the counter and went over to the far corner of the coffee shop, where an upright piano was tucked against the brick wall. He sat on the piano bench and looked down at the keys.

  Brooke picked up his empty cup, then shrugged at Maggie. "What's wrong with him?"

  "No clue," she replied. She took her mocha and headed after him.

  Chapter Eight

  She stood next to the piano and watched him pick out the opening notes of a song with his left hand only. She set her coffee cup on the piano lid, next to a cluster of battery-operated candles that flickered cheerily, in sharp contrast to the stormy look on Reese's face.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "The Long and Winding Road," he replied.

  "Not the song, silly. What's eating at you?"

  Reese put both hands on the keys and began to play, slowly and meditatively.

  "Shane," he finally said, speaking softly and staring down at his hands.

  "Is he okay?" she asked. "He's not hurt, is he?"

  Reese shook his head.

  "I see. So how old is your son now?"

  "Fourteen." She noticed with surprise that his hands on the keyboard were a bit shaky.

  "What's wrong? Who is the 'witch'?"

  "Olivia. She's refusing to let me see him," he said.

  Olivia Sigworth was the mother of his child. She was an over-the-hill actress—and the most mercenary person Maggie had ever met.

  She used to wonder why Reese had fallen for Olivia, until she spotted an old tabloid pic of the two of them back in their heyday: a sexy rock star and a gorgeous model, wasted out of their skulls, clinging to each other as they stumbled out of a night club. They had once been in the same place in life, but he had long since moved on.

  "Can she do that?" Maggie asked. "Refuse you access to your own son?"

  He shrugged, still playing. "She claims I'm a bad influence on him."

  "But the judge gave you visitation, didn't he? I remember reading about it in the Hollywood Reporter."

  "Finally," he muttered. He stopped playing. "The judge ruled a few months ago that I can start having unsupervised visits."

  He and Olivia had split up years ago, soon after he got sober and realized he was living with a woman who only loved him for his fame and fortune.

  "You didn't have visitation at all until a few months ago? I didn't realize."

  "Being a junkie who committed vehicular manslaughter will put a damper on a family court judge's opinion of you
," he said matter-of-factly. He began to play again, slowly.

  "I'm sure it would," she said. "But you haven't been that person in years."

  "I'll always be the person who got wasted and killed a man in a car crash, whether I stay clean or not." He said it coldly, but then seemed rattled by his own words, because he paused his playing for a moment, as if losing track of the song. His head was still down and she couldn't see his eyes.

  She could have argued with him, pointing out that the man who'd been killed in the accident had been as wasted as he was, and had chosen to go driving with him of his own free will. But it wouldn't have mattered. So she said nothing.

  After a while he picked up the song again, right where he'd left off. She waited until he'd finished it. Then his fingers rested on the keys, and he sat very still.

  "After the ruling," he whispered, "I drove down and visited Shane at his boarding school a few times during the semester. But now I'm supposed to have him every other week for the rest of the summer. His school starts up again in four weeks, so this is the only time I can actually be with my son, at home, just the two of us. It's our first chance to really get to know each other."

  "So what's the problem?"

  "Olivia was supposed to come to Carita for the month so we could take turns with Shane without him having to travel back and forth to LA. Now all of a sudden she says she's not coming."

  "Why?"

  "She says she doesn't have the money for the trip."

  "Carita is expensive," Maggie acknowledged.

  He shook his head. "I leased her the Travis place for the season." The Travis place was a three-story Cape Cod style mansion at the farthest end of The Row, big enough to house an entire football team (which Maggie wryly decided might be just up Olivia's alley).

  "Sounds pretty good," she said.

  "And she gets a weekly support check all year," he added. "Even though Shane is away at boarding school most of the time."

  "You pay for boarding school."

  "Of course. It's the top school in the state. Full of normal kids, most with no connection to show business. The school was my idea. Olivia had been doing pap strolls with Shane, trying to get him noticed on social media for the last couple of years. The tabloids were calling him Shane Stevens. Her idea, I'm sure. His name's John Shane Tibbets, you know?"